


Threads

by entanglednow



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-04
Updated: 2008-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-25 16:07:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A thin man, in small glasses, is suddenly so close that Peter takes a breath. He stares down at Peter impassively, like he doesn't matter at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threads

  
_Peter wakes up itching all over, like his skin is covered in ants._ _He turns his head to the side, a slow, unpleasant sensation that makes his head spin. There's an IV in his arm, and the metal under his back is cold, and slippery. He doesn't remember...he remembers Nathan, he remembers Nathan, and the virus, and then nothing. Nothing at all._

 _He tries to move, but all he manages is a sluggish skid across the table under him._ _He twists his head back the other way, hoping to catch...something._ _There are people there, he knows it, but they're out of his eye line, a murmur of voices, under the steady thrum of machinery._

 _"Who are you? What do you want?"_

 _A thin man, in small glasses, is suddenly so close that Peter takes a breath. He stares down at Peter impassively, like he doesn't matter at all._

 _"Do it," someone says flatly._

 _The thin man moves towards Peter, hand lifting away from his side. He touches him, cold skin against Peter's temple._

 _And his head is on fire._

~~~

Then suddenly, he's somewhere else. Peter's laying in dirt, face pressed into a mess of dust, and blood, there's the clattering fall of plaster and brick all around him, and when he takes a breath, he inhales more debris than air.

He coughs, and tries to turn his face. There's a tear of pain down the middle of his forehead, and one of his eyes fills with blood. Leaving him utterly still, breathing through nausea. He doesn't know what happened, or where he is, he just knows where he isn't any more. He blinks, coughs grit out of his throat, and tries to move again.

He's crushed under something, the weight of it pushing him down into the dirt, he can't see anything but the dry endless cloud of dust, from the rubble that's still shifting around him, a tangle of metal and glass and shards of brick, still falling from high above. Is he under a building, under the collapsed weight of a floor, two floors? Jesus, where is he?

Peter coughs again, and carefully tips his head back, but he can't see anything at all.

Gravel rains down into his face, and the bright sting of it makes him choke out a scream. The noise echoes around the dusty space for a moment, then dies away. He very carefully pulls himself to a sit. Blood runs across the back of his hand and the material of his pants, and shirt, dark fabric he doesn't recognise as his own.

A great sheet of metal is pinning him down, heavy and half-sharp against the length of his left leg, and the edge of his waist -

Someone calls his name.

He knows the voice well enough, he knows that low, thick, questioning tone, and he groans panic and puts his hands up, tries to find a space that isn't sharp, tries to push. But it's all too jagged and too heavy, he makes his palm bleed without budging the thing an inch - he's not healing. He's not healing at all, he's bleeding everywhere, and the low sick throb of pain doesn't fade away, but gets worse, a shudder of discomfort that swings between sickening and dull agony.

Peter tries something, anything, electricity, teleportation, but all it does is leave his head thumping and his body shaking.

He's powerless.

And there's nowhere to go - Sylar appears in a shower of rubble, and Peter stares at him, for lack of anything else to do, stares at him, and dares him to pull him into pieces. Dares him to come close enough that Peter can do him damage, even bleeding and trapped like an animal.

Sylar puts a hand under the metal and flips it off of him, like it weighs nothing at all. Peter braces himself against the fallen wall, carving lines and grazes in his bare back, but Sylar doesn't look smug, he doesn't look angry, and he doesn't make any move to harm him. Instead he kicks his way through the rubble, and it tears through his jeans, and the thick impossible black of his coat. He goes to his knees on a cracked piece of wall, and slides closer to Peter uncaring of the sharp edges.

"I thought you were dead," Sylar says fiercely, and he _is_ angry now, or something so close it looks the same, and it takes Peter a long second to realise what's wrong.

Sylar's hair is too long, it falls in his eyes in a way that's impossible.

Peter isn't in a where, he's in a _when._ He's in the future...again.

And he doesn't know which one, or how far. He puts a hand down, fingers stinging where they push on the rubble. Sylar wraps a hand round his wrist and steadies him. His fingers are cold. Peter has no option to pull away, because he'll fall face-first into the tangle of metal to his right. But he can twist his fingers away from Sylar's, he can refuse to lean into him.

"Why are you helping me?"

There's a deep frown in the middle of Sylar's forehead, heavy brows drawn down in what is clearly confusion, and Peter doesn't understand, _can't_ understand, he doesn't even know where to start.

"I can't -" he frowns and the pain from that movement has him gasping, and lifting a hand out of the rubble, raising it to his face. "What -" the skin of his forehead shifts gruesomely under his fingers on another flare of pain, drawing a long ragged noise from his throat.

"Don't touch it," Sylar says fiercely but quietly, he catches Peter's hand, and draws it slowly, carefully away from the wound.

Peter doesn't resist the touch, or the movement. He's shaking under a flare of nausea as his skull aches, viciously, and there's a trail of bright, fresh blood in his eye.

"Jesus." He knows it's deep, he knows it's serious, and suddenly his skin is cold and his fingers numb.

Sylar slides both hands round the bottom of his face and Peter takes a breath, unwilling to shake his head hard enough to pull free. But Sylar's fingers don't dig in, they just hold. Then they tip his head up carefully.

"Peter, your face, I don't know what to do." The anger's back but it's smoother, it's more controlled, and that's different too.

For a moment Peter's lost in the implications of a new future, of so many different new futures, each flowering under every new decision. Where did they end? And this one? Did he fall? Did his powers overwhelm him so much, that he was now Sylar's ally? But he didn't have any powers? And that didn't make sense at all.

"Peter?" Sylar's voice has gone low, almost soft, but there's an impatience, a seriousness to the words. "What do I do about your face?"

Peter breathes air that tastes like blood.

"Put pressure on it, something clean," he says thinly.

Sylar tugs open the flat wet buttons on his coat, finds the edge of his shirt and tears a long length of one side off, folds it in quick, careful movements, and then tips Peter's head back again.

Peter doesn't tense, it will only make it worse on the ripped skin down his forehead, and round his nose. But it hurts, it hurts like fucking _madness._ When he's stopped shaking Sylar very carefully lifts one of his hands and places it over the cloth.

"I need my hand, I'm going to lift you."

Peter can't nod, he can't even see. He wants to ask where they are, what happened, who he even is, but it's all tangled up together. He can't hold on to one line of thought.

"I have to -"

"You don't have to do anything, we have to get out of here." Sylar crouches, eases Peter up out of the rubble with a slow, impossible strength that's frightening. Though he can't keep his feet. He sways forward on a wave of nausea, and Sylar catches him, holds him until the world stops shuddering. Then there's an arm around his waist, drawing him up against the material of Sylar's coat, and Peter knows the sensation of blood under his fingers when he catches it in a hold that desperately wants to be stronger than it is.

"Hold on," Sylar says quietly. "I've got you."

~~~

 _The first thing Peter hears, is his own voice screaming._

 _The fingers are gone, and his head burns where they come free, like someone has forced something inside, something cold and alien._ _He gasps a breath, flexes against the restraints, half sick and half dizzy._ _His nose is bleeding, the ceiling above him is utterly white, it takes him a second to find the right muscles to turn his head, to find the thin man in small glasses._

 _He's wearing no expression at all. Staring down at Peter like he might as well already be dead._ _But the voice that speaks isn't his, it comes from across the room, far over Peter's head, it's deeper, all rough demand and impatient anger._

 _"Again, try harder, push him further, we need to know, we need him to tell us."_

 _The man lifts his hand again._ _Peter pulls where he can't go, shoulders jerking, tipping his head so far to one side that something in his neck tears horribly._

 _"NO!"_

~~~

Peter's staring at the sky above New York, but it's not the same, even if he couldn't see, the wet tin smell of the air, and the hard taste of grit in the back of his throat would tell him it wasn't the same. There are buildings missing, long scorch marks in some of the taller ones. The city's been tidied up, but it's still quite clearly broken. It's too quiet, like the grim aftermath of...something only just gone. He wonders if he was here when it happened. If he ended up crushed under a building.

Peter's coat's thin, and one of his own, he recognises a tear in one sleeve, but he's not cold. It doesn't stop him from shivering. His feet take him to the house, not entirely sure if it will still be there, if it will still belong to the Petrellis. The streets are cold, and almost entirely empty.

Peter's seen ruined futures before, he's been to them, but this place...it just doesn't feel right.

The house still smells right, it looks the same, everything laid where it should be. Or as close enough as makes no difference. He stands in the hallway, fingers cold inside his sleeves, and thinks about calling...something. But he thinks, maybe, he's learning how to be cautious. He already knows the people in the future aren't the same people he knows. He's not the same person he was two years ago, or one year ago. If he went back there, he thinks he'd be afraid of him.

There's a mirror on the bureau in the hall that he slips towards, without thinking about it, a long slash of glass that he appears in, not by inches but in one step.

He doesn't look any older, but he looks different, wider, sharper - and he's scarred. One long line diagonally from the middle of his forehead round his nose and down one cheek. It pulls ever so gently at the features of his face, makes him look...broken.

So that was how the wound healed.

The scar is still red, Peter knows the way scars heal, he'd guess at six months. Though if he still has his powers, he has no way of telling whether it's been a day or years? He holds a hand out, and his skin obediently produces electricity, then, more bizarrely, fire, and finally something that looks like melted darkness. He makes a fist, looks up at his face and breathes. So he's no longer powerless.

He's no longer himself either, this version of him he doesn't know. He hasn't gone to the future, he's _replaced_ the future version of himself. He doesn't know how or why. His hands slide down the wood of the bureau. He opens one of the drawers, letters, paper, pens, carefully stacked folders in pristine blue, that look thick, but untouched.

And slid underneath one of them - a newspaper. Peter slips it free and shakes it out. The date reads March 9th 2014. He frowns, eyes sliding to the dining room, where he can hear the steady murmur of voices, unhurried and intent. If he goes in there will he know what he's supposed to know, what the cold men in the white room want to know. He stays where he is.

The stairs creak above him and he looks up.

Sylar is in this future too.

He looks thinner out of his coat, but he's relaxed against the stair rail, like he knows the place. Like he _belongs_ here, in some strange way.

"They've been waiting for you," Sylar says quietly, something under the words is amused, some meaning Peter doesn't have the history, or the past? to define.

"They can keep waiting," Peter tells him, for want of anything else to say.

Sylar doesn't protest, he just slips down the last few steps, leans against the wall.

He opens his mouth to speak, and the door to the dining room opens, letting out light, and voices, and Nathan. Peter turns, paper sliding out of his fingers. Nathan sees him, and frowns, pulls the door shut behind him.

"You're late," he says flatly. Though Peter knows him well enough to read the thread of relief under the words. Nathan didn't think he was coming, and that's something that's almost familiar in this dusty upside-down future. Nathan doesn't react to Sylar leant against the bottom of the stairs, he's using his annoyed face on Peter. Peter's the one who hears Sylar drifting off the stairs behind him, feet near-silent on the floor, he moves past him, leans against the bureau. He's taller than Nathan.

Nathan's looking at him, really looking at him, but Peter doesn't know this version of himself well enough to fake it. So he doesn't try for an expression.

Nathan looks different like this, hard edged and older, like he's been carefully stacked into pieces until he resembles something he should. Like he's been created, rather than threaded through time. That scares Peter.

"I'll come in a minute," he says simply.

Sylar stares at Nathan impassively.

Nathan does look at Sylar then, and there's something complicated there, that Peter can't unravel.

Nathan nods. "Fine, just don't leave, you promised, damn it."

Peter doesn't know what he promised, what the future version of him promised, so he says nothing.

Nathan rolls his eyes, turns back into the doorway, his shoulder thumps into Sylar on the way out, and Sylar does nothing, nothing at all.

"Shall I bring him back?"

Peter frowns at him, he doesn't understand the question, the intent, or the history behind it either, so he shakes his head.

Sylar surprises him, the corner of his mouth tilts up, ever so slightly.

"You don't trust me to talk to your brother, you think I antagonise him on purpose."

Peter doesn't say anything, he just stares down at the paper again...2014. His face doesn't look any older, and Peter doesn't know if that's part of his powers, or because all of this isn't real.

Sylar appears over his head in the mirror. "Sometimes I do."

Long hands touch his arms, just above the elbows, and Peter stiffens, shakes Sylar off without thinking about it. Sylar releases him, and for a moment his expression is - but then it's gone, eyes hard, mouth a flat line.

"You haven't looked at me like that in a long time," Sylar says tightly.

Peter stays where he is, stares at his reflection, and barely recognises his own face.

"Am I a bad person?" he asks quietly.

And just like that Sylar doesn't look angry any more. "Why would you ask that?"

Peter stares into the mirror, watches Sylar's face go tight over his own, he's never really stood this close to him before. Never when they were both so still. He's taller than Peter remembers.

"I just want to know."

"You want to know if I think you're a bad person?"

It takes Peter a long moment to realise that's a different question entirely.

"Am I?" Peter can't keep the breath of desperation out of his voice, because this is the future, or a future, and he wants to know, he needs to know, if his powers corrupt him.

"No," Sylar says simply.

But he can obviously tell by Peter's expression that this isn't good enough.

"No, you're an obnoxiously moral person, sometimes to the detriment of everyone around you. And you know how many times I've protested that your pathological need to save everyone will get you killed. Or mad, or worse."

Sylar looks uncomfortable now, but he doesn't move away, and he doesn't lash out. Peter's almost as curious about that, as he is about himself.

"What's worse than mad or dead?"

Sylar's head shifts, ever so slightly, to one side, in a way Peter has always thought was a threatening gesture, but somehow in the hall of his mother's house just looks curious.

"You know what's worse."

And suddenly he does, he does know what's worse.

"What would I do then?"

Sylar's quiet for a long second. "You'd burn the world around you," he says eventually, and though Peter's half expecting it he feels something in his chest relax at the words.

"And what would you do?"

Sylar sighs, tight and unhappy, like the question is unfair.

"I'd stop you."

~~~

 _There's acid in the back of his throat, eyes burning in his head, and his nose is still bleeding, it's left a long wet trail down his throat._ _He's still breathing, but it's a hoarse, wet noise that makes him sound like he's dying._

 _He can feel his own heartbeat, a shuddering vibration that's no longer separated into beats. It makes him feel light-headed and sick._

 _"Harder, make him tell us how it ends, make him find out what causes it all."_

 _A shine of glass slides into view and Peter doesn't even have the strength to pull away._

 _"Don't," he says desperately, before the world dissolves in pain.  
_

~~~

The future is dark this time. But the darkness is soothing, it's a darkness utterly free of pain, throat easy under every breath. The sheets are soft under Peter's back. He puts a hand up, finds the alien line of scar tissue down his face, fingers curious. This thing, it's starting to feel real. Is this the future he would have had, if he'd lived?

Peter sits up, pushes the sheets back, and slips out of bed. The house is silent, opened up only in slivers of light, he follows the brightest along the upstairs hall, pushes at the door that holds it all.

He's not surprised at all, to find Sylar, curved over on the floor, back a long bent line. He tips his head over his shoulder, looks surprised under a pair of solid black glasses. He tugs them off, while Peter blinks, gets his feet under him and rises.

"Peter."

He's still wearing expressions he shouldn't be wearing, real and alive and _human_ like he shouldn't be. Sylar looks at him like he cares what he thinks. It takes Peter a long confused second to realise that he'd actually come looking for Sylar. How did he make this future? How did the world make this future.

He pretends that's what he needs to understand. He pushes the door shut behind him, takes two steps. Sylar stares down at him, and says nothing at all. But he doesn't have to, Peter can read him. It stuns him that he knows how, but he does.

"I thought you were angry," Sylar says carefully, warily, like it means something.

"No," Peter says honestly. "I'm not angry." And suddenly he knows what the future him would do. He's been sharing this space, breathing in it, but he hasn't been _living_ it.

He takes the papers from Sylar's hand, and lets them drop to the floor, slides into his space and kisses him. Sylar goes very still, and Peter's heart instantly thumps in his chest, but it's not anger, Sylar's arms are still hung helpless at his sides, and Peter relaxes, eases away. Sylar pushes a hand into his hair, fists it in the length of it, and keeps him breathing against his mouth.

"Don't," Sylar says simply, and Peter understands. So he doesn't, he leans in again, kisses him again, and Sylar's hand relaxes, fingertips still threading inside, but no longer fierce. This future isn't his, but maybe it's not _wrong?_ Some time in the future Peter will trust Sylar enough to let him put him back together again.

Sylar's waist is narrow, smooth under his hands, and Peter, almost against his will, slides his hands up higher, finds the outline of shoulder blade, shoulders and the long length of Sylar's neck, he holds it while he kisses him, because he can. Sylar makes a soft sound that Peter can feel, slides an arm around Peter's waist, fingers spreading on skin then digging in. Peter lets him, he relaxes into his grip and kisses him back.

He's almost certain now that he's going to die in the white room, pinned down and carved open. Because he's going to tell them nothing.

Peter sways back long enough to drag his own shirt over his head, Sylar catches it and drops it behind him. Then one hand finds the bare length of Peter's waist, fingers warm on the skin, and pushes until they thump against the edge of the bed.

They both slide down in one movement, Sylar's waist and hips solid under Peter's fingers, in a way he's never experienced before. He digs his nails in, while Sylar pushes his shorts down, hands sliding along his bare hips and thighs. Peter rises onto an elbow, fingers dipping between them and pulling roughly, impatiently, at the button and zip of Sylar's jeans, and then he's pushing, pushing until they shift down Sylar's legs, leaving denim a tangled heap on the bed, then gone.

Peter's hands stay where they are, restless and intent, until Sylar swears against his mouth, finds Peter's wrists and draws his hands up over his head. He finds the cold metal lines of the frame, and wraps his fingers around it. Sylar _knows_ his skin, knows where to hold him, where to dig in with his teeth, pressing him down in the sheets hard enough to bruise, a long, strange delicious weight, and then letting him back up to hurt him in return.

Peter can hear his own breathing, ragged, shaky exhales, cut through with groans.

Sylar's fingers are pressed into the soft skin of Peter's arms, while they push up and in, and against each other in greedy, half angry, half desperate pushes. How many times have they done this? How many times have they pushed against each other, angry and desperate, just like this?

And is it wrong to steal this moment for himself?

Sylar's hand slips down and around him, around them both, long fingers and warm palm, tight enough to make Peter gasp, head tipping back on the pillows for air. Sylar's other hand folds over his own on the metal, closes hard enough to push it deep into his fingers and palm, and Peter's begging quietly, a rush of wet, desperate words that drag noises out of Sylar, noises he's never heard before.

And then nothing matters at all.

...

Peter thinks he sleeps for a while.

The sheets on Sylar's bed are warm, half tangled round his own legs now, and Peter is still staring at the ceiling, fingers coming back to the edge of the scar on his face. Only now, it's not something twisted, it's not something wrong. It's just him.

Sylar's hand touches his own, stops it's path across the skin. Peter lets him draw it down.

"I don't know what they want. I'm trying to save myself. I don't know what they want, but they're killing me." Peter's voice is thin in the darkness. Sylar goes very still next to him. Then shifts up on an elbow. His expression is fierce, even half in shadow.

"Who's killing you, don't know what who wants?"

Peter shakes his head. "The man in glasses, he keeps - pushing me forward in time, and I can't - it's killing me."

He doesn't want to go back.

He doesn't want to die.

"I can't stop them."

"Where are you?" Sylar says tightly, fingers dug suddenly into his arms. "Tell me where you are?"

Peter wants to tell him that it doesn't matter, that he either doesn't exist, or he's too far away to make a difference.

None of it matters.

"I don't know," Peter says helplessly. "I don't know, it's just a room, it's just a room, like the company, like some sort of basement medical facility and I don't remember anything."

Peter looks up.

"I think I'm going to die there -"

~~~

 _Peter breathes, wet, hard breaths, and he stares at the white ceiling, for what, he's fairly sure, is the last time._ _He doesn't have anything left, the man with the glasses has hollowed him out._ _There's no sound in the silence._

 _..._

 _Peter's fingers are warm, and when he shifts them together he finds them sticky-wet._ _There's blood on the table._ _He tilts his head, a slow, impossible gesture that hurts like fire._

 _Tiny glasses, one lens smashed, rock gently on the floor._

 _The straps come up in a wet tear of fabric, that Peter hears, but doesn't see._

 _When he rolls his head back -_ _Sylar is an impossible shape in the white room. All dark hair and eyes, there's a trail of blood running into the collar of his shirt._

 _Peter can't speak._

 _"Hold on," Sylar says tightly, then he slides an arm round his shoulders, and pulls him into the light._


End file.
